The present invention is related to information handling systems. As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling systems generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems and networking systems.
Some information handling systems include multiple host computers and multiple storage devices such as SCSI tape drives or storage area networks (SANs). When a host computer sends a SCSI command to a SCSI target device, the host typically does not send the command directly to the SCSI device using a single transport protocol. Instead the host may send the SCSI command via other interfaces and protocols such as fibre channel or iSCSI/Ethernet. SCSI target devices, however, do not usually operate or respond to fibre channel protocol. Rather an appliance or bridge converts or translates a SCSI command encoded in fibre channel protocol or iSCSI protocol to a SCSI command encoded in SCSI protocol and then sends the command to the SCSI target device.
After the SCSI command has been translated from a fibre channel protocol or iSCSI protocol into a SCSI protocol, information about the host that issued the SCSI command may be removed. If a SCSI analyzer is connected between the appliance and the SCSI target device, the source of the SCSI command may not be available or presented within the protocol to the analyzer. Fibre channel analyzers may be used to determine the source and destination ports on a fibre channel link, but not at the SCSI protocol interface. Since the fibre channel interface operates independently of the SCSI interface on an appliance, the SCSI layer lacks information about a fibre channel port address. Consequently, when used in conventional SCSI systems, SCSI analyzers can determine the target identifier the data is to be sent to, but cannot determine the source identifier within a fibre channel or iSCSI shared storage environment.